Don't Talk to Strangers
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: Inspired by The Animatrix: Beyond A group of kids playing a vacant lot full of mysteries encounter an equally mysterious woman


+J.M.J.+  
  
Don't Talk to Strangers  
  
by "Matrix Refugee"  
  
Author's Note:   
  
I based this story mostly on the "Animatrix" short "Beyond", and also on a very interesting dream I had not too long ago. There's more going on in this fic than meets the eye. Keep an eye on the kid named Tommy....  
  
Disclaimer:   
  
I do not own "The Matrix" series, its characters, concepts, imagery and/or other indicia, which are the legal property of the W Brothers (Warner and Wachowski), Red Pill Productions, Village Roadshow, et al.  
  
* * * * * * * * * *   
  
Summer. Endless days without school. Days you could do as you liked, running free in the tumbledown buildings and vacant lots between the apartment houses and stores.  
  
They hung together as a small group: AJ, Peewee, Marky, Jake, Tommy, Jake's sister Tanya and their cousin Emily, the boys playing stickball with broom handle bats and a tennis ball while the girls -- especially Emily, who was only seven -- mostly got underfoot.  
  
Most of the empty lots already had posses of kids hanging out on them, so they had to move around the neighborhood until found one that hadn't been taken.  
  
That's when they found the lot next to the Cobweb Shop. A big sign hung in the front windows of an empty storefront: "Coming Soon: Crosswell TV Repair" but no one had moved into it yet. A whole tangle of dusty spiderwebs hung draped from the window frame and over the empty glass cases inside, which was why Tanya called it the Cobweb Shop.  
  
Then Marky, the skinniest of the gang found the loose board in the rotted wooden fence around the empty lot next door and squeezed through it. Finding that no one had claimed this lot, he wiggled another board loose to make a door and let the others through.  
  
An old shed stood in the middle of the lot, covered with vines. A few auto bodys lay rusting in another corner. People had dumped old TVs and other junk over the fence. No one had been here in a while, so they claimed it as their stomping ground.  
  
But in the days that followed, they noticed odd things about this lot: Sometimes the sun shone so brightly that they could hardly see. Other times birds or ripped-up newspapers -- or both -- came flying out of nowhere and swooped around in dizzy circles before they vanished. Or a strong breeze blew even though the air hung still in the rest of the city.  
  
But that didn't keep the boys from playing stickball or, with Tanya's help, from turning the shed into a fort using some of the junk scattered over the yard.  
  
But then there was the day that Jake hit the glass bottle with his stick and broke the bottle... and then the bottle put itself back together good as new. Or the day when AJ fell off the roof of the fort and he just... floated down. That was even more fun that stickball, so they started jumping off the roof of the fort and the top of the fence, just to see who could float down without hitting the ground hard.  
  
Then came the day the mystery woman showed up...  
  
On the way to the lot, AJ and Peewee started squabbling over who could float down better. Jake suggested they all have a championship Float Down that day and settle it. "It'll be cool!" he said.  
  
"Okay, what's the prize?" Peewee asked.  
  
"A biiiig kiss from a pretty girl?" Emily asked, looking at Tanya.  
  
"Ewwww!!!" Tanya groaned.  
  
"I ain't entering no championship with *that* for a prize  
  
By now, they'd come up to the lot and were just climbing through the fence when Tommy looked up. "Hey, who's that?" he called, pointing to something... or someone.  
  
On the cross piece of a disused telephone pole on the far side of lot stood a dark-haired woman in a long black leather jacket over black pants and boots and a silvery shirt made of a shiny material. Sunglasses hid her eyes and a breeze they couldn't feel billowed under the long skirts of her jacket making it look like a superhero's cape.  
  
"She looks like a superhero, like Batgirl," said AJ.  
  
"What's she doing?" asked Jake.  
  
"She's gonna jump!" Tanya cried.  
  
And the stranger-woman jumped down, flipping forward like a gymnast... she floated down... one foot just touched the ground lightly. She hovered, then touched down, standing on two feet.  
  
She turned toward them. Her body stopped and gathered, like an alert cat might.  
  
"Wow!" -- "Faaar out!" --"Cool!" -- "How'd you *do* that?" -- "Are you a supe'hero?"  
  
"If I knew I had an audience, I wouldn't have done that," she said. A small smile played about her mouth. "Well, super *maybe*, but I don't know about the hero part."  
  
"Cany you fly like a bird?" Emily asked, flapping her arms like wings and trying to jump as high as the woman had.  
  
"Not quite," the mystery woman said.   
  
"Can you show us more?" Tommy asked.  
  
The mystery woman hesitated. "I'm not really supposed to."  
  
"Please?" -- "C'mon, please-please?" -- "Pretty please with chocolate syrup?"  
  
She looked around. "Okay, but not a word of this to *anyone*, hear me?"  
  
She jumped up to the telephone pole, landing on it as light as a feather. Then she jumped off sailing over their heads and landing on top of the fence. She jumped down onto the roof of one of the car bodys and sailed across the lot onto the roof of the shed-fort. And from there, she jumped onto the roof of the Cobweb Shop.  
  
The kids cheered. Emily and Tanya jumped up and down with glee, holding onto each other.  
  
The mystery woman held up her hands as if for quiet. They hushed down. Tommy covered his mouth with both hands.  
  
The woman lunged forward, seeming to run across the air, over their heads, across the lot, stepping down onto the ridgepole of the roof of the building opposite. Then she backflipped off, somersaulting in midair, gaining speed as she plummeted to the earth.  
  
But she touched down on the tip of one toe, almost like a ballet dancer.  
  
"Aaall RIGHT!!!" Jake shouted as the kids cheered.  
  
"You rock, lady!" Marky cried.  
  
"You're like an X-Man or something?" AJ asked.  
  
"Not really," the woman replied.  
  
"You could be," AJ said. "You just need a superhero kind of name... like ...Lady Windwalker."  
  
The mystery woman smiled again. "That's as good a name as any," she said.  
  
"But you gotta teach us those moves," Jake said.  
  
"It's not easy to teach, and I really can't show you how to do it here," the woman said.  
  
"We can learn," Tommy said.  
  
"Will you show us, please?" Marky begged.  
  
"Okay. I think I can give you a little taste of it. I can carry the smaller ones on my back as I jump," she said. She turned to Marky and Tommy, the slightest of the boys. "I'll take you fellows first."  
  
"I'll fight yah to be first, Tommy," Marky said, half-teasing.  
  
"There's enough fighting going on in this world, gentlemen," Lady Windwalker said, kneeling down. "Tommy, you'll be the one." She helped Tommy up onto her shoulders and stood up. "Now hold on tight."  
  
He clung to her shoulders with both hands as she leaped up into the air, soaring onto the roof of the shed. Tommy felt his heart drop into his shoes as they soared up onto the roof of the Cobweb Shop.  
  
They poised there for a moment, looking down on rooftops and neighboring lots. Tommy blinked, the world going reddish black for a split second.  
  
Then she swooped down, somersaulting. He felt his stomach tighten inside him as the ground rushed up to meet them.  
  
Then they stopped, rightside up, her feet on the ground.  
  
The other kids came clustering around them. "Whoa! That was AWE-some!" -- "You lucky dog!" -- "Me! Me! Take me!"  
  
Lady Windwalker turned to Emily. "All right, little one, you're next." She took Emily in her arms.  
  
She gave Emily a less daring flight, just up to the roof of the shed and onto the top of the fence and down to the ground. Marky, Peewee and Jake got the same lift as Tommy. Tanya chickened out, and AJ pested her for a jump, but Lady Windwalker insisted he was too big for her to carry easily.  
  
They all were having so much fun, they hardly heard the motors approaching. But suddenly, Lady Windwalker looked up, her face going white as she turned toward the throbbing sound on the street.  
  
"Oh my God," she muttered. She leapt to the top of the shed.  
  
"Hey, it was just getting really cool!" Peewee yelled.  
  
"I'm sorry. I've stayed in too long. I have to leave now!" the woman cried.  
  
She whipped something that looked like a walkie-talkie out of her pocket, hit a button on it and spoke into it. "Cam, I need an exit! Get me outta the Matrix!"  
  
She jumped from the shed to the top of the telephone pole and up to the roof of the Cobweb Shop. She ran across it, out of sight among the roofs.  
  
Someone on the sidewalk ripped three boards off the fence. A tall man in a dark brown suit and dark glasses stepped through the opening in the fence. Two other men who looked like him only they were a little shorter stepped in through after him.   
  
"She escaped us," the tall man said.  
  
"She's probably in the area," one of the other men said.  
  
"Search for any traces," the first man said.  
  
As the other two started roving over the lot like cops checking a crime scene, the first one looked around, then looked right at the kids.   
  
"Go away!" Tanya yelled at the intruders. "You scared our friend away!"  
  
The tall man smiled at them, but the smile didn't look very friendly. "Oh, I didn't mean to scare her away. I'm nothing to be afraid of, once you get to know me." He leaned down to them a little, but somehow they didn't want him that close. "But you see, young folk like you shouldn't really be around her."  
  
"Did she kill someone?" AJ asked.  
  
"Is she a robber?" asked Emily.  
  
"Not exactly, but... I can't tell you what she is: none of you would understand it even if I did. Now. If any of you ever see that woman ever again, I want you to go to a grown-up whom you trust and tell them that you saw her. Don't go near her: she mught hurt you."  
  
"But she didn't hurt us just now! She was nice. She showed us how to fly," Tommy said.  
  
"She might not have hurt you now, but the next time you see her, she might not be so friendly."  
  
"Oh NO!!!" Marky yelled.  
  
They looked past the men in the brown suits. A whole bunch of construction workers had shown up on the street with a lot of heavy machines, earth-movers and such.  
  
"This place is much too dangerous, too. You'd all better go home to your families where you'll be safe," the tallest man said. The other two men with him hustled the kids out of the lot. The tallest one took Tommy by both arms and led him out onto the sidewalk.  
  
Already a crowd had gathered on the street, including some of their parents. Policemen were keeping them back, telling them to go about their business.   
  
"Grown-ups I'll never understand," Tommy muttered.  
  
His mom came running from the crowd to meet him.   
  
"Mrs. Anderson, he's unhurt, but I suggest you keep an eye on him in the future," the tall man said, handing him over.  
  
Tommy, there you are! When I heard you were all playing here in this dump and that dangerous criminal was spotted in the neighborhood, I got so worried," his mom said. "Look at you, you're all dusty. Come on home and wash up: Dad wants you to help him set up the new computer he brought home..."  
  
* * * * * * * * * *   
  
By the week before school started again, the old storefront and the vacant lot had both vanished. A parking lot stinking of fresh asphalt and yellow paing had taken the place of their old hangout.  
  
"Those guys looked like the Men In Black," AJ said, as the gang sat morosely on the steps of the apartment building opposite the parking lot.  
  
"They didn't wear black, they wore brown," Emily said.  
  
"Y' think she was an alien they were tailing?" Marky asked.  
  
"Nah, even better: I bet she was a super-spy and she stole some kind of big secrets from the government," Tommy said.  
  
"Or maybe she had some big secret and the government wanted it from her," Tanya said.  
  
"Maybe," Tommy said. But he they all had one thought: none of them would forget the day they met the mystery woman who could fly.  
  
And somehow he couldn't forget what she had said before she vanished....  
  
THE END 


End file.
